Moral outrage: ‘Not a problem anymore'

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Apr 20, 11:27 PM (ET)

WASHINGTON (AP) - In a surprise outburst that cast a diplomatic shadow, a screaming protester confronted President Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao and interrupted the welcoming ceremony on the White House lawn Thursday. Bush later apologized to the Chinese leader.

"President Bush, stop him from killing," the woman shouted, to the surprise of hundreds of guests spread across the lawn on a sunny, warm day. "President Bush, stop him from persecuting the Falun Gong" - a banned religious movement in China.

The woman, identified by the AP as Wenyi Wang, 47, had obtained press credentials through official channels.

Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin said she had been charged with disorderly conduct and that a charge of intimidating or disrupting foreign officials also was being considered.

Stephen Gregory, a spokesman for the Falun Gong-affiliated newspaper The Epoch Times, said she had received a press credential through the newspaper and the paper believed she intended to attend as a reporter.

He identified her as a doctor with a specialty in pathology, a Falun Gong practitioner based in New York.

"It's hugely embarrassing," said Derek Mitchell, a former Asia adviser at the Pentagon and now an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

China "must know that this Bush administration is good at controlling crowds for themselves, and the fact that they couldn't control this is going to play to their worst fears and suspicions about the United States, into mistrust about American intentions toward China."

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From the Editors:

If you’re counting the sheer number of people killed, tortured, jailed, and black listed because of their conscience, there is no greater offender of basic human dignity than China, a totalitarian-capitalist state whose human rights record used to be occasionally mentioned in the halls of our government.

That’s why it’s so comforting to see that when a human rights protestor upsets a staged political event, a cameraman and secret service agents cover her mouth, haul her away, book her into jail, and then our president apologizes.

That pesky moral outrage thing apparently is not a problem anymore, but irony is everywhere.

Is that right? If she is in the home of the free, and she upbraids the world’s greatest fascist (Hu, not Bush), and gets booked into jail, is that irony or coincidence?

We at Howlin’ Leroy Eenk do understand that the U.S. government owes the government of China a lot of money, as China, and Japan, and others, have been bankrolling the extravagant lifestyles of Americans. We don’t want to anger them either by excercising our freedoms.

Also, American tech companies have been like ducks in Chinese water, signing on with the Thought Police to persecute journalists who use the Internet to criticize fascists.

And those tech companies drive dump trucks full of cash to Washington DC every other year or so in a wonderful show of affection for the U.S. political system, which equates cash with speech.

It's win-win.

We also think this ambivalence toward the plight of Chinese dissidents demonstrates a certain moral sophistication on the part of Americans.

Iraq, for instance, took quite a bit of convincing before the American public signed on.

President Bush himself had to step to the microphone, in front of God and everybody, and explain his heavy heart over the oppressed Iraqis — plus, personally attack the wife of a critic. And it wasn’t until he outted Joseph Wilson’s CIA agent wife in an uncontrolled press conference that the American public wholeheartedly signed on for that stunning example of geopolitical genius.

In conclusion, we could care less about the lack of religious, political, artistic and cultural freedom in a country of over a billion, and the inhumanity and horror. We could also care less about our own diminishing civil rights in this country.

However, after careful consideration, we are aren’t sure what we do care about any more, besides the Arabs owning our ports.